A 17 YEAR OLD AFRICAN GIRL CHILD

Today is another day and dear diary, I am here to meet you once again; only this time its 9:46pm. Today, a Saturday was quite fun for a Chelsea football club fan like me (chuckles). A day two of our youngsters scored and for Manchester United, a rival football club who had won us 4-0 on the first match day; they lost at the death. Oh! David Luiz, a former Chelsea player whom I delighted in watching; I loved him, but he left us for a rival football club at a time when we were serving a transfer ban—a time of peril for us and he ran away. I did love him but surely it had to wane a bit; for he is now the football player of a rival club. All this had thrown me into a cocktail of emotions whose contents were happiness, bliss, euphoria. I was glowing. But, amidst all these; I live in a house where I am the only son. An African house not just any other house and more so, a firstborn child. I grew with pressure, pressure of being an ‘example for the young’, ‘a role model’. I had to live with thin margins for my younger ones had to see a very good example.

Now, my sister is 17; and I watch her battle it out with my parents and wish I was a girl, maybe I would have been a role model. I don’t know what to say; lest she takes up my amateur words. I am an ambivert, but she’s a total extrovert who’s learning how to be an introvert because her parents won’t tolerate an extroverted daughter at such young age. More heavier was the weight on her because she was also an Ada in an Igbo family. She had a younger sister who would definitely look up to her. Our parents aren’t so old but haven’t left some of the old fashioned ideologies. Maybe, they are right or maybe they are not. How would I know? I have never been a parent before.

I watch my sister come into the sitting room to meet my mom and ask her why she had made a cynical comment in her dialect earlier in the day, when she had met her with a male friend. I reduced the volume of the movie I was watching; so they would think I was not listening with the earpiece still plugged in my ears. My mom, apparently wasn’t so social when young. I guess she was weaned in the idea of ‘if a male touches you, you would get pregnant’. My dad who always tell me he was a virgin till about 21 years of age. My mom was telling her about the dangers of friends. I could deduce that my mom doesn’t want her having friends (or rather male friends). I could deduce that my parents are really scared of their daughter having an unwanted pregnancy. They are scared, I trust her; I let her go out……when out with her; I give her, her social space. I can’t tell what she is going through. I don’t know what it feels like. I don’t even know if I should advocate for less stringent measures on her. A pregnant daughter of 17 would break my mom’s heart.

When I was about 17 years of age, I was protected; but not as much as females my age then. But then, most of them still got pregnant. These measures by parents often make their kids go wild once admitted into the university. Many times I wish I had an older sister who could give her counsel, wise one. She’s a free-living given to a conservative mom who has no idea on how to handle this eccentric.

I don’t know how to handle this, I might not know the perfect way to handle this. There are so many females out there who feel hated by their parents, guardians, who are facing similar situations like this without a clue on how to go about it. So if you had read up to this point. Don’t leave without dropping a comment and sharing. A comment, a young teen could seek solace in.

Good evening readers!